<B>Long time to the last dance</B><BR>By Jane Albert<BR>The Australian<BR>April 05, 2002<P>STEVEN Heathcote receives a lot of fan mail but none quite as touching as the drawing his daughter Mia, 6, sent him recently. "Dad, I miss you," it read. "This is what I do while you're away."<P>For Heathcote, 37, spending time away from his Melbourne home and family is one of the downsides in an otherwise enviable career as principal dancer with the Australian Ballet. This year marks two decades since he joined the ranks of the AB, a remarkable achievement in the gruelling world of dance. To mark this occasion, artistic director David McAllister has programmed Heathcote to star in Laszlo Seregi's Roman gladiator epic Spartacus and Totem, a short new piece by Bangarra Dance Theatre's artistic director Stephen Page.<P><A HREF="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4077121%255E16953,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

Valerie Lawson writes about Steven Heathcote in the Sydney Morning Herald:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Despite looming middle age, it is hard to imagine a more masculine figure than Heathcote, who at 37 retains the looks, the charisma and the fitness of a dancer half his age.<P>This month, his image is all around town, in monster-sized posters advertising his starring role as the gladiator Spartacus. He's dressed in next to nothing, just a few strips of leather criss-crossing his torso. Only a dancer would dare reveal as much skin. They have nothing to hide; no fat, no sag, their muscles toned from hours of exercise, every day, since childhood.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/04/05/1017206262717.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

<B>Spartacus, Australian Ballet</B><BR>Jill Sykes, Sydney Morning Herald<P>Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House, April 9<BR>April 11 2002<P><I>Spartacus</I> looks more bizarre with every revival - yet within its unwieldy frame its heart still beats strongly, its theme of David and Goliath conflict remains depressingly relevant and it has a title role to be prized.<P>Steven Heathcote, coming up to the end of his second decade with the Australian Ballet, is especially honoured by this year's production. He first played Spartacus in 1990 and led the cast again in the season's opening performance on Tuesday.<P><A HREF="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/04/10/1018333371323.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

<B>Spartacus (Review)</B><BR>By Deborah Jones<BR>April 12, 2002<BR>The Australian<P>IT'S all about Steve. To celebrate Steven Heathcote's 20th year with the Australian Ballet, artistic director David McAllister rightly wanted to put on something special for him. Spartacus offers a starring role in which Heathcote has some history and can show off McAllister's growing crop of talented young men. Nice thought. If only Spartacus were a better ballet.<P>In somewhat sketchy and confusing fashion, the ballet purports to tell the story of the failed slave uprising against Rome in 74BC. Hungarian choreographer Laszlo Seregi's 1968 ballet was taken into the AB repertoire in 1978 and toured to New York in 1990, where a poster of a semi-clad Heathcote caused quite a stir.<P><A HREF="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4115528%255E16953,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

Read all about it:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>AUSTRALIAN BALLET APPOINTS NEW GENERAL MANAGER<P>The Board of The Australian Ballet announced today the appointment of Mr Richard Evans to the position of General Manager of the company.<P>Richard Evans is currently General Manager of The Bell Shakespeare Company, and in earlier stages of his career had considerable experience in stage management and production.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><a href=http://www.criticaldance.com/ubb/Forum15/HTML/000286.html target=_blank>More</a>

Amanda Dunn - The Age, May 31 2002:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Ballet's leading man</B><P>It is just after 7am, and Steven Heathcote, principal artist with the Australian Ballet and star attraction of the company's current season, is perched at the ******* bench in his inner-city Melbourne home, having returned from an interstate tour the night before. His handsome face, so striking on the stage, is wearing some of his tiredness - he and his wife Kathy, have had a night interrupted by the barking coughs of their son Sam, 9, and daughter Mia, 6.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><B>more...</B><P>

Vicki Fairfax reviews <I>Spartacus</I> for The Age:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Worth the price just for Heathcote</B><P>This ballet is a tough call in all sorts of ways, not the least for the dancers of the Australian Ballet who, as their predecessors have done over the past 23 years, have to break through its unforgiving speciousness. <P>Rhetoric defines the shape and line of the choreography; distraught love translates into perilously high-flying lifts and poses more pleasing than purposeful, while the agony of man's inhumanity to man is reduced to scenes that are merely picturesque and declamatory. It also takes more than a little hedonistic delight in the flaunting of near-naked and very beautiful bodies.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/31/1022569832264.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

In State of the Arts:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Ballet Blokes</B> is a special treat reserved only for Brisbane, Darwin and Melbourne in mid-year. Designed to reaffirm the role of male dancers within the company, the program includes "Totem", a new commission by Stephen Page to be created on Steven Heatcote and "Catalyst", which was Stephen Baynes' first commissioned work for the Ballet. "The Sentimental Bloke" is a theatrical and entertaining reproduction of the ocker romanticism of C.J. Dennis' "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.stateart.com.au/sota/performing/default.asp?fid=963" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

Georgina Safe writes about Margaret Illman's return to the Australian Ballet in The Australian:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>MARGARET Illmann, the expatriate ballerina who starred in the English National Ballet's $15 million Swan Lake tour of Australia in 1999, is returning home.<P>Australian Ballet artistic director David McAllister yesterday announced he has appointed Illmann, who is a principal dancer at the Deutsche Staatsoper in Berlin, as a principal with the AB.<P>In a stroke of serendipity, her first performance back in Australia will be in Graeme Murphy's new production of Swan Lake, which premieres at Melbourne's State Theatre on September 17 before touring to Sydney.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4418493%255E16953,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

Preview of "Ballet Blokes" in The Age:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Putting a blokey spin on ballet</B><BR>By John Mangan<BR>June 14 2002<P>Can men in tights ever be considered as Australian as football and meat pies? It's the question that's being raised by the Australian Ballet's latest triple bill, which opens tonight at the Victorian Arts Centre under the umbrella title Ballet Blokes.<P>Ballet? Blokes? The term is an effort to remind us that ballet isn't just about women in tutus, says Australian Ballet's deputy general manager Josephine Ridge. "We have a predominantly female audience, and while we're very attached to them, we'd like to encourage more men to attend."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/13/1023864322922.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

Review of <I>Ballet Blokes</I> in The Age:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Sentimental gala fetes a grand bloke</B><BR>By Vicki Fairfax<BR>June 17 2002<BR> <BR>Of all the accolades that retiring Australian Ballet general manger Ian McRae will receive over the next few weeks, none is likely to be simpler and more telling than the one delivered on Friday night by a descendant of the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan, dance maker Stephen Page. "You are a decent, good man and fair," he announced to McRae from the stage where he introduced his new work, Totem.<P>Opening night was a tribute gala to McRae, who has been with the company for 17 years, and, as such, was a night when the past and the future collided in a number of memorable moments. Lisa Bolte, looking vulnerable in the middle of the stage without her ballet shoes, recalled the company's headline-producing bicentennial season at Covent Garden. Nicole Rhodes and Matthew Trent dancing a fragment of William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated reminded us just how this company delights in choreography that relentlessly pushes the boundaries.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/06/16/1023864378422.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

I didn't know Asylmuratova was in her 60s...<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Dancers step over age barriers</B><BR>By Jane Albert<BR>July 26, 2002<BR>The Australian<P>WHEN the Royal Ballet arrived in Australia from England for its five-week tour last month, the 85 dancers were accompanied by the usual clobber of pointe shoes, tutus and leg-warmers. But there were also some unexpected extras that rarely feature on an Australian Ballet dancer's luggage list: four young children.<P>Not only is the AB a relatively baby-free zone, it is also a remarkably young company by international standards.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4774722%255E16953,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

Boy I hope that newspaper in Australia prints a retraction, from her Kirov Bio:<P>Altynai Asylmuratov:<BR>Born in 1961 in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, into a family of dancers, Altynai Asylmuratova was in a way destined to become a dancer. She studied at the Vaganova Academy in Leningrad (pupil of Inna Zubkovskaya). After graduation in 1978 she joined the Kirov Ballet, becoming a principal in 1982.<P>

Review of the AB's Dancers Company:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Young talents spread wings (Review)</B><BR>By Lee Christofis<BR>July 29, 2002<BR>The Australian<P>THE Australian Ballet's Dancers Company has often launched the work of the few Australian choreographers interested or talented enough to work in the ballet idiom.<P>So it's refreshing to see Simone Clifford's Point-Counter-Point, premiered by the AB School last summer, looking wonderful on this year's final year students on the Dancers Company's three-states-in-six-weeks tour.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4795848%255E16953,00.html" TARGET=_blank><B>More</B></A><BR>

United! combines the forces of the West Australian Ballet and the Australian Ballet in a contemporary triple bill that gives each of the companies a chance to strut their individual stuff in two Australian premieres and one world premiere.

The newest work, Adrian Burnett's Subtle Sequence of Revelation, draws on dancers from both companies and best taps into their abilities, barrelling along to the pacey urgency of Philip Glass' String Quartets Nos. 2 and 5. While one can recognise some minor similarities with Twyla Tharp's In the Upper Room, the movement language and choreographic structure seem quite different.

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